Ron Wyden, Senator From Planet Where Congress Works: Ezra Klein

By Ezra Klein -
Oct 19, 2011

There’s a joke that Senator Ron Wyden’s staff members pass around the office. When they’re tired
and overworked by their Energizer Bunny of a boss, it’s
delivered with a sarcastic bite. When they’ve had their full
eight hours of sleep, it’s their rallying cry. “You got a
problem?” they say to one another. “Ron Wyden has a
comprehensive, bipartisan solution to fix it.”

It’s true. The country has problems. And Ron Wyden has
comprehensive, bipartisan proposals for fixing them.

Take tax reform. Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan might have
galvanized the Republican presidential campaign for a week or
two, but it’s an unworkable mess. Members of the Obama
administration might say they want to overhaul the tax code, but
they haven’t offered specifics, and they don’t have a working
relationship with the Republican Party to pass anything in
Congress.

But Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, has a plan. Originally,
it was co-sponsored by Judd Gregg, a Republican senator from New
Hampshire. But he retired in 2010. Now it’s co-sponsored by Dan Coats, a Republican senator from Indiana. The plan wipes out a
raft of deductions and exemptions; lowers rates for individuals
and corporations; eliminates the alternative minimum tax; makes
filing easier and, for many Americans, automatic; and is roughly
revenue neutral with the expiration of the Bush tax cuts for
households with income more than $250,000. It’s not as radical
as some other ideas out there, but then, neither is the
political system. I would bet that Wyden’s plan ends up pretty
close to what we eventually get.

If Wonks Ruled

Then there’s health-care reform. Along with Utah Republican
Senator Bob Bennett, Wyden spent much of 2008 and 2009 pushing
the Healthy Americans Act. The plan, which eventually attracted
a half-dozen Republican co-sponsors, was what health-care reform
would have looked like if the Senate were run by a bipartisan
commission of policy wonks. If a Republican wins in 2012 and
decides to take health-care reform forward and rightward rather
than merely backward, the bill -- which proposed ending the tax
preference for employer-based health care and moving Medicaid
beneficiaries into the same private-insurance options that
wealthier Americans get -- would be a good place to start.

The list goes on. Infrastructure? You might enjoy Wyden’s
proposal for TRIP bonds, which would help states finance public-
works projects. The idea has attracted the co-sponsorship of
North Dakota Republican John Hoeven. Or perhaps you worry about
government agencies tracking you through your mobile phone. Then
take a gander at the Geolocation Privacy and Surveillance Act,
which also secured Illinois Republican Mark Kirk’s support.

It’s not that Wyden’s proposals are perfect. But they’re
serious, thoughtful efforts to map out principled, bipartisan
compromises. And Wyden is not shy about bringing them up -- in a
committee hearing or a television interview or even when he’s
jammed into an elevator with a few other senators.

That earnest intensity hasn’t made him the most popular
senator. His constant pushing to go further, go faster, go now,
has irritated the White House and annoyed his colleagues. But
everyone respects his work ethic -- and his staff’s. “There are
very few members who have come up with such significant
contributions in tax reform and health-care reform operating
with just his own individual staff,” marveled Senator Kent Conrad, a North Dakota Democrat, during a Budget Committee
hearing.

But Wyden isn’t the weird one. It’s his colleagues -- the
ones who aren’t releasing a steady stream of proposals -- who
are weird.

View From Mars

Imagine you sat down a Martian with a copy of the
Constitution and asked him to describe how our government works.
Well, he would say, or signal by flashing his antenna lights in
a certain pattern, the Congress is mentioned first. It can
declare war. It can write and pass legislation. It can overturn
the president’s veto. It can even impeach the president.

The president, meanwhile, can’t write legislation. He can
veto whatever the Congress sends him, but if two-thirds of the
Congress agrees that the president is wrong, they can ignore his
protestations. He can make nominations and write treaties, but
not without congressional assent.

To the Martian, it would be pretty clear how our system
works: Congress drives the action, and the president weighs in.

The reality is the opposite. The president acts, and
Congress reacts. There are few exceptions in recent history --
the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance reforms are one -- in which
members of Congress autonomously began work on a high-profile
issue, and the president was eventually forced to sign or veto
the resulting law. The vastly more common path is for the
president to ask Congress for legislation on health care or
education or jobs or infrastructure and then for Congress to
begin some sort of (usually unsuccessful) process.

There’s a reason for this, of course. The Founders
envisioned competition between the various branches of
government, but the political system evolved to emphasize
competition between the two major political parties across
branches of government. As leader of one of those parties, the
president is in close contact with his congressional allies, and
they coordinate their efforts, just as the other party
coordinates its efforts against the majority.

But Wyden’s office is a small outpost where the natives
imagine how Congress would behave in a parallel universe. In
Wyden’s office, health-care reform began late in the Bush
presidency and wasn’t associated with the leadership of either
party. In Wyden’s office, tax reform isn’t a matter left to the
presidential candidates, it’s a policy pursued as if, as
senators and Congress members have said over and over, it’s
something they actually want to achieve.

To Wyden, this parallel universe is real. “Can you imagine
telling voters that if you elect me, the first thing I’m going
to do in Washington is wait for the president to make some
decisions?” he said, laughing.

But outside Wyden’s office, in the halls of the Capitol,
that is the first thing new members of Congress do. Outside
Wyden’s office, the bipartisan Healthy Americans Act remains a
proposal, not a law. Outside Wyden’s office, tax reform is mired
in seemingly intractable partisan conflict. Oregon’s wonkish
senator might have comprehensive, bipartisan plans to fix
America’s problems, but he doesn’t have a way to fix America’s
politics.

(Ezra Klein is a Bloomberg View columnist. The opinions
expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer on this story:
Ezra Klein in Washington at
wonkbook@gmail.com.